Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
For over forty years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: The War On Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin—the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adán Barrera—has left him bloody and scarred, cost him people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul.
Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created thirty more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.
Barrera’s final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America. Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow, Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies—men that want to kill him, politicians that want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable—an incoming administration that’s in bed with the very drug traffickers that Keller is trying to bring down.
Art Keller is at war with not only the cartels, but with his own government. And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined. Now, he learns the final lesson—there are no borders.
Don Winslow doesn’t pull his punches in THE BORDER, a sweeping, masterful tale that capped a trilogy that he’d been writing over the past twenty years:
“It’s the dirty secret of the war on drugs – every time an addict sticks a needle into his arm, everyone makes money. We’re all investors.”
This is a heavyweight novel, tipping the scales at more than 700 pages. But unlike some sizeable thrillers that may be epic in page count but diluted in power (including a couple I read around the same time), THE BORDER hits extremely hard the whole way through with its scope, storytelling, and substance. It doesn't feel 'stretched out', and is never waffly; instead, brave and ferocious.
Through its pages - and the trilogy as a whole, though you could marvel at THE BORDER as a single read without having experienced the prior two books - Winslow crafts a harrowing tale that bristles with anger, and delivers a kaleidoscopic look at the realities and injustices of the so-called war on drugs.
Veteran DEA agent Art Keller has battled Mexican drug cartels on the front lines for four decades. He’s witnessed, suffered, and dished out horrifying violence. He’s fought monsters and gazed into the abyss, perhaps for far too long. With his old nemesis Adan Barrera, head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, now missing and likely dead, Keller has been called in to lead the DEA as it fights the deadly flood of heroin across the border. But is Mexico really the heart of the problem?
Does the border even matter when addiction and corruption lie within?
While Keller is a central character, THE BORDER is really more of an ensemble tale, as we follow a diverse array of characters whose stories illustrate various aspects of the ongoing drug crisis. Guatemalan children gamble their lives to flee gang violence and hop trains north. Cartel splinter groups unleash bloodbaths to grasp Barrera’s throne. Wall Street financiers play see no evil as drug profits are washed through big-money property deals. Cops risk their reputations and lives going undercover. Waitresses shoot up in dirty vans. Journalists are silenced. Judges imprison ten-year olds as threats to the country. Politicians spout platitudes, rile up the electorate, and feign morality in their craven pursuit of money and power.
“Do you seriously believe anyone really wants to win this war?”, a conservative senator privately asks Keller at one point. “You can’t be that naïve – tens of billions of dollars a year in law enforcement, equipment, prisons … it’s business. The war on drugs is big business.”
Reading THE BORDER feels horrifyingly true-to-life, like consuming a lightly varnished documentary where some names have been changed. A searing expose. It takes us into the darkest corners of a failed war over a multi-billion-dollar industry where many people (not just the obvious culprits) make money and gain power from the suffering of millions of others.
The culmination of Don Winslow’s cartel trilogy is epic storytelling, crime writing at its best, and one of the reads of its year - or many years - in any genre.
Craig Sisterson is a lapsed Kiwi lawyer who now lives in London and writes for magazines and newspapers in several countries. He’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at festivals on three continents. Craig's been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards, McIlvanney Prize, is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. His book SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, was published in 2020.
Note: this is an edited version of a review originally published in the New Zealand Listener when THE BORDER was released. Due to changes in ownership and website for that magazine, that review is no longer online and so I have revisited it here on Crime Watch, in amended form.
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